


I Will Not Ask (and neither should you)

by Koren M (CyberMathWitch)



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Secrets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-16
Updated: 2014-08-16
Packaged: 2018-02-13 11:36:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2149269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CyberMathWitch/pseuds/Koren%20M
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a darker version of Clint and Natasha's world, she was never really "free" from those who trained her, and Loki was far from the first to snake his way into Clint's head (he was just more thorough about it).  </p>
<p>Or, how you were raised is a part of you, but each day you will make the conscious choice whether or not to let it <i>define</i> you.  All you owe your past is acknowledgment, not fealty.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Will Not Ask (and neither should you)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CloudAtlas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CloudAtlas/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Breathing Underwater](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1442353) by [Niobium](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Niobium/pseuds/Niobium). 



> For the prompt: 
> 
> _I would not ask you were you came from, I would not ask and neither would you._  
>  Honey just put your sweet lips on my lips, we should just kiss like real people do.  
>  _[Like Real People Do, Hozier]_
> 
> Inspired in part by a scene from Niobium's "Breathing Under Water".
> 
> _Many_ thanks to [SweetWaterSong](http://archiveofourown.org/users/sweetwatersong) for being an awesome beta, despite her limited email/net access.

**_I will not ask you where you came from  
I would not ask and neither should you_ **

*****

"How do you know I'm not Hydra?" he asks. 

_"I don't"_ is on the tip of her tongue... because she thought she was the only one, because she can't be sure she knows them all. 

*****

_It begins with fire licking up walls and curtains, rough hands dragging her out of her bed and to a place where the food is hot but the rooms are always cold. It begins with the words written into her blood, in a red so dark she's drowning in it._

*****

_It begins with a mission. It begins with_ the _mission, in an alleyway in Prague with an unexpected arrow instead of a gun._

_He's not the mission she was sent there for. He's not even supposed to be there._

_Or is he? By the end of the day, when no other contact comes through, she no longer knows._

*****

He laughs, short and sharp, when what she finally says is "I know you." Then there's a heartbeat. A pause. "I know." 

He doesn't look at her when he says "I know _you're_ not." 

Somewhere deep in her chest something tightens in a painful twist. Somewhere she feels something suffocating and struggling for its last breath.

*****

_It begins with the words, with their sibilant hiss in his ears. He can't remember the first time he heard them, just the vague lingering taste of hard packed dirt and sawdust in the back of his mouth. There's just the echo of them in the hum of his bow string, lessons learned side by side._

*****

_He's with SHIELD just over two years before there's even a hint of contact, and all it is, is a knowing glance from someone he thinks maybe he used to know, who passes him by. The words are in their eyes, in how they nod, but never in their mouths. Just the look, and the shift of memory against his brain._

*****

It wasn't supposed to be like this, she thinks. _They_ never told her they were already there inside SHIELD, already so deep. They never told her their plans, never told her she was their back up (at best) - just another pair of eyes and ears. She got close to people, made herself indispensable, learned how to fit in. In case someday they gave her a mission, but it was always just watch and wait, watch and learn. 

Respect, and then friendship; lust, and then love - none of those things had been part of her plans.

Ignoring who she was wasn't the same thing as forgetting, but when she tried hard enough it had the same effect. Now, ignoring it isn't an option anymore - ever since the bunker she can't think of anything else. She never had time to check _all_ the files with her name in them, but somewhere, someday, one of them will surface, and what then?

She focuses on Clint's fingers tapping on the steering wheel, solid and certain like he is (not shifting and false like she feels) and tries to let his rhythm and the unending fields of corn and soybeans take her far away.

*****

Snakes and monsters sing through his brain, discordant and wrong. Loki added a whole new layer to the jagged chord, but the chorus has always remained the same. It used to be white noise in the back of his mind that he could forget for days, weeks, even years, until Loki turned the volume up to eleven and then the dial got stuck somewhere around nine.

He glances over at Natasha, with her head tipped back and her eyes half closed, breathing evenly. She's always the one trying to scrub herself clean, never realizing he's dirtier by far.

*****

Row after row of endless green and brown slide past their windows as they eat up the miles between their past and their future.

She focuses on his fingers tapping on the steering wheel, he focuses on the sound of her breath, and they let their rhythms and the unending fields finally silence the voices of their pasts. 

*****

**_I could not ask you where you came from  
I could not ask and neither could you_ **

**_Honey just put your sweet lips on my lips  
We could just kiss like real people do_ **

**Author's Note:**

> Blame and thanks goes to both SweetWaterSong, who mentioned the question "what if Clint were Hydra?" while visiting for the Cap 2 premier, and Niobium's "Breathing Under Water", which I'd just read. (The initial image and conversation in my head was a direct result of Niobium's fic, including the idea of them on a road trip in the aftermath.) 
> 
> I quickly realized two things. First, that I don't like stories about betrayal, with friends or partners losing and then having to rebuild trust in one another. Second, I realized that this scenario could play out in one of three ways: neither of them were Hydra, one of them was actually Hydra, or _both_ of them were Hydra. Somehow, while I couldn't stand the idea of one or the other of them having been hiding or betraying the other this whole time, the idea that they both were somehow guilty brought things back into balance for me. Together in all things, and all that. 
> 
> Movie canon makes the idea that the Red Room might "offload" their agents into other Hydra-esque organizations when the Communists fell at least plausible, and a conflation of comics canon for Tybolt's Circus of Crime (which has Nazi/Hydra ties) with Carson's Carnival of Traveling Wonders (or, you know, the what-if 'verse where Clint grew up in Tybolt's instead of Carson's) makes for Clint's backstory here.


End file.
